library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(reshape2)
library(RColorBrewer)
library(knitr)
library(kableExtra)
In May 2017 I went on a 5 week trip around Europe. Yes, it was nice. Of course it was! I took a lot of photos, so obviously when I got back I wrote some simple code to have a look at my photographic habits inspired by this post. I used exiftool to dump some data into a csv and then I pulled it all into R to see whether my patterns were strong enough to either change how I shoot or change my kit.
I only had one lens on me at the time, and I often found myself in camera shops because I felt my lens was limiting the kind of photos I could take. So I figured I might look at the exif data from the photos I took and see whether I was bumping up against constraints imposed by the kit zoom lens I was using. So the question I’m trying to answer is:
Is my lens holding me back?
Do I have an excuse (uh … reason) to buy a new one?
The key features in a lens are the focal length and the maximum size of the aperture (the opening that lets in the light), so I’ll focus on those. I was using a kit zoom lens with my Sony a6000 which can shoot with a focal length of 16-50mm and an aperture between f3.5 and f5.6 depending on how much you have zoomed in (see the chart further down).
I like taking pictures of architecture, and I also like shooting at night so I tend to want a bigger aperture (smaller f number) and wider frame (short focal length). But whether my impression is correct or not will be revealed by the data.